Fantomasas

I will test it out. It might be a good enough solution with the comfortable shortcut.

Hello Affiniteers! I am a long-time Illustrator user and now a recent convert to Affinity Designer and wanted to share what I've made with AD. I saw the sale that was going on about a month ago and decided to pull the trigger. Glad I did as Affinity Designer is a very well-oiled machine that already offers a robust set of features that have been brilliantly thought out and has immense potential for further features. Well done team Serif! One of the features that I was most interested in when I purchased AD was the isometric grid and its features. I started out with a simple project: The NES controller. It's just a cube at the end of the day so I figured it'd make for a great first project. The tools are pretty self-explanatory if you are familiar with other design software and everything felt incredibly intuitive. Anywho, I have a habit of droning on and on when I'm excited about something and Affinity Designer definitely inspires that side of me. So without any further ado, please enjoy some of my work.






I hope you enjoy my work! I plan to keep on making more isometric controllers for the time being, with a Gamecube controller being the next piece. Like my work? Check out my Dribbble account where you can see more: https://dribbble.com/b_houtz
I also just joined this hip new thing called "Instagram" recently in 2019 and if you're looking for an account to follow (hah) I would be honored to have you join me: https://www.instagram.com/sly_hound/

On some of these controller posts, I have thoughts on Affinity Designer for those who are interested in such things. Thanks!

Hi, I would like to ask for the Brush settings shortcut, which is fairly standard on many apps like Photoshop or Substance Painter.
If you hold CTRL and Right Mouse Button, you can change brush size moving the mouse horizontally and brush hardness moving the mouse vertically. I think Photo is lacking a fast brush adjustment shortcut and tapping [ ] is not a fluid workflow, it is very primitive and slow.

There is an option (tick box), in the tool's context menu: Lock Children. It will either transfer artboard transforms or not to the contents of the artboard.

Yeah, the problem does not exist in the today's version of Beta. The snapping was also causing it in the previous Beta.
Good Job!

Hi Fantomasas,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thanks for your feedback. A few notes regarding your points:
1. The latest Affinity Designer Customer Beta includes commands to Move Inside/Outside which should help a little here - both commands have (customisable) shortcuts.
2. Double-click the children object you want to select until you get it selected (each double-click goes on level down in the layer's hierarchy). Another way is to press and hold ⌘ (cmd) to select the children object directly on canvas ignoring the layer structure.
3. Currently there's no Contour Tool in Designer. Was requested by a few users too.
4. The Colour Picker Tool (left toolbar) lets you apply the sampled colour directly to the object(s). Make sure Apply to Selection is ticked in the Context toolbar
5. Use the Slice Tool (the first tool) to edit slices. The second is just for selection them.
6. No perspective/mesh distort tools in Affinity Designer yet. This should come in upcoming versions (see Designer's roadmap)
7. Not sure I understood the issue here. You can edit/define the global colour using other methods clicking the Edit Global Colour button and changing the dropdown option in the opt-ip that will appear.
8. The latest Photo Customer Beta already include an option in the Preferences, Tools section to disable the toggling for the shortcuts (Use ⇧modifier to cycle tools). Tick it to disable the toggling. Affinity Designer should have it in an upcoming Beta as well.
9. Go to Affinity Preferences, User Interface and untick Show Lines in points
10. Linking images is still being worked on.
11. Please report this in the respective Bugs section and attach a sample file so we can reproduce and fix the issue.
12. Check my reply above. For specific issues/bugs please fill a bug report in the respective section.
13. [Knife Tool] Thanks for feedback. This is something that was already requested by some users.
14. Affinity Photo is strictly a RAW Developer/converter and photo editing app. It doesn't provide any DAM (digital assets management/library management) functionality relying on OS previews to display thumbnails in the open dialogs.
15. Affinity Publisher is still in development and its integration and some its functionality is still being worked on or ported to Designer/Photo where applicable.

Hi, I am trying to use AD/AP for as many tasks as possible at my job. Here are some everyday problems that I have discovered:
• Parenting a layer to another can only be done in the layer panel There has to be a shortcut for that, I can't be bothered looking for objects. Even with CTRL K, it takes too long for the tasks. In Modo (3D program), you select a bunch of objects and hit P (last object is the parent).
• Parented layers are hard to select with the box or layer selection. Selecting one with the modifier key is easy, but it is a nightmare if you have 2 or 3 levels of parents with multiple children. Even select all command fails to select children.
• CorelDraw (we use this one for many tasks because it is a graphics design + production company, so lots of plotting/cutting/engraving etc.) has a contour tool, which allows to easily expand or shrink the object. No such tool in AD, even if you do expand-stroke, it requires re-merging objects because it expands the outline only, as opposed to growing the entire object.
• Color picker is fast for a single object, but it is slow for multiple. Corel allows you to sample a color, and the fill whatever objects you want. Combined with the difficulties of selecting multiple parented objects, it is very slow. If you could add the modifier for the color picker tool to apply the color (instead of sampling it), it would be great.
• Selecting export slices - impossible. Sometimes you want to move or resize them instead of drawing a perfect one...
• No perspective transformation. No, AP does not do it either, it doesn't understand how to transform non-pixel or multiple layers at all.
• Global colors force a different color panel which has opacity only, even though I was told it is a feature, it is a useless feature making the global colors useless for any project for me.
• Toggling shortcuts on AP are bizarre, nothing else works this way, always hitting the wrong brush/erase/box selection tool. Then I have to undo and select the right one...
• Different units for stroke size could be useful, although not a problem if they aren't.
• +1 to the linking images request!
•  Exporting a PDF usually leaves white lines on the edges, and it isn't the pixel-perfect issue. The exporter just fails to export the correct bounds, sometimes by a few pixels.
• No visible bleed area... Have to make an entire project with the bleed on the artboard, and then resize it prior to export. Or draw an export slice 2mm smaller if I want to send the design to the client.
• Knife tool would be nice.
• AP is only good as a photo editing tool once you have a photo selected. It is way too slow for previewing RAWs...
• Publisher is not a solution for not implementing linked images, visible bleed, correct export settings. A program like AD has to be able to do one-page project without relying on another app.
A knife tool or vector perspective tool are major tools and I don't expect them to make their way to AD soon... However, I think that the small things like toggling, selection, parenting, color picker, slice transforms, global colors fix, linking images, PDF export issues or visible bleed should be easy to implement/fix.